General Information-A&N Islands

The Andaman & Nicobar Islands is a union territory of India. This territory is known as A & N Islands, or ANI. It is located in the Indian Ocean, in the southern reaches of the Bay of Bengal, nearer to Indonesia and Thailand. This comprises of two island groups - the Andaman Islands and the Nicobar Islands - which separate the Andaman Sea to the east from the Indian Ocean. These two groups are separated by the 10° N parallel, the Andamans lying to the north of this latitude, and the Nicobars to the south. The capital of this territory is the Andamanese town of Port Blair.There are 572 islands in the territory, of which only some 38 are permanently inhabited. Most of the islands (about 550) are in the Andamans group, 26 of which are inhabited. The smaller Nicobars comprise some 22 main islands (10 inhabited). The Andamans and Nicobars are separated by a channel (the Ten Degree Channel) some 150 km wide.The territory's population as per the most recent (2011) Census of India was 3,79,944 and the literacy rate is 86.27%. Added together, the total land area of the territory is approximately 8,249 km².The total area of the Andaman Islands is some 6,408 km²; that of the Nicobar Islands approximately 1,841 km².

Hindi and English are the official languages of the islands. Bengali is the dominant and most spoken language, with 26% of the population speaking Bengali. The other major languages spoken in the islands are Hindi (18.23%), Tamil (17.68%), Telugu (12.81%), Malayalam (8.11%) and Nicobarese (8.05%) according to 2001 Census of India. Other minor spoken languages are Kurukh/Oraon, Munda and Kharia. Andaman Creole Hindi is widely used as a trade language in the Andamans.